Allen R.

A Week in the Life of a Consultant at ECENTA America, Inc.

As experienced by Allen R.

About Me

My name is Allen. I’m an American that lives in a northern suburb of Dallas, TX with my wife, son, and our two dogs. I’m a work hard – play hard kind of guy that likes to have fun no matter what I’m doing. I like to do things with my family, and we all like to stay active. When I’m not at one of my son’s sport events or other activities I like to spend some time working on my golf game and learning martial arts.I work for ECENTA America, Inc., where I’m able to use my college degrees in Business and Computer Science, and my previous work experiences to be a successful SAP CRM consultant. I chose ECENTA because of the great people and because I knew I wanted to work with SAP. I had no idea I’d grow as much as I have professionally and that I’d be so happy with the company. I knew I’d like the work, but I never knew it would be this much fun for this long.Let me explain what I mean by walking you through a week in my life as a consultant at ECENTA America, Inc.

Sunday

Sunday morning is the only morning I sleep in. I was up late watching a live Mixed Martian Arts (MMA) event on Pay Per View and needed some extra rest.12 noonI take my dogs for a walk before having lunch with my wife and son. It feels good to be out in the Texas sun enjoying the late morning with my Cocker Spaniel/Poodle mix and my American Staffordshire Terrier. 2 PMI am a master at packing, and I use those skills to get all of the things I need for the upcoming week into a carry-on bag and my laptop backpack. I’m done in under 15 minutes.3 PMMy taxi arrives, we have a family hug and I’m off to DFW to fly out to Fort Lauderdale, FL. I’ll arrive at my hotel by 10 PM local time provided there are no travel delays.

Monday

First day of the work week, and the start of a weekly fitness goal. This week the goal is hydration without carbonation (which means I’m sticking to water and tea).6 AMI start the day with a 2 mile jog. I like to fight off any fatigue from travel through exercise and hydration.8:30 AMI arrive to the office and prepare for the meetings for the morning. Today is an important day, because we have finally moved from the CRM and ERP development environments to the quality environments, and now the business can start writing test scripts for User Acceptance Testing (UAT).4 PMThe meetings are finally over and the project team and I will spend the next few hours planning out and working on bug fixes and resolving any outstanding issues.7 PMI end the day the same way I started it, with some physical activity. This time it’s some weight lifting in the hotel’s fitness center. The starting and ending of my workdays with physical activity is one of the keys to health while on the road.9 PMI spend 1 hour learning Spanish using Rosetta stone and finally go to sleep.

Tuesday

I spend the morning working on issue with orders not replicating correctly between ERP and CRM. I focus on research, reaching out to a few colleagues for help, and reading SAP notes. After several rounds of trial and error, I finally find an SAP note that has the fix I’m looking for. This issue only occurred in the quality environment, and it had a major impact on the project. It took a day to solve, but the project team and the customer that it was taken care of so quickly.

Wednesday

The test scripts have been started. There is a lot of interaction with the business to help them get the scripts correct. There are a lot of them to do and not a lot of time to get them finished

Thursday

Thursday… aka “Fly day.” Thursdays are always jam packed. They fly by because I’m so busy getting as much done as possible before heading to the airport to fly back to Dallas. I’m always amazed at how productive Thursdays are.

Friday

6 AMI leave my house early to avoid heavy traffic on my way to ECENTA’s office in downtown Dallas. I love Fridays. I’m able to interact with colleagues that are on different projects. We’re able to help each other. Sometimes I have an issue that has been bugging me all week and I find someone at the office that knows just what to do. I’ve been known to be the Tylenol to a few of my colleague’s headaches from time to time too. The sense of community that we get from working together on Fridays is one of the things that makes ECENTA great.

Saturday

Every day at home is special, and my family and I always make a point to have fun and enjoy time with each other. That could mean all day fun activities or all day house work.

Final Thought

When it comes to choosing the right company for you to work for, only you know what is best for yourself. Let me explain why I know that I made the right decision when I chose ECENTA America, Inc.To start off, I knew that I’d never find a better, more diverse group of people. Our differences make us stronger, and we are able to learn from one another. On any project, I might be with someone from Malaysia or Germany or Australia or Canada or any of our other office locations.Second, we work well together. I might not spend some of my free time when I travel with every consultant on the project, but we always treat each other with respect inside and outside of the office.Third, ECENTA promotes the development of its employees and fosters professional relationships. For example, in January of 2013 ECENTA brought all of its employees to Dubai for several days to learn from one another and to get out and have fun. Those events don’t happen every month, but they happen often enough that you can see colleagues that you have not seen in a while, and you get the chance to catch up and keep your relationships strong.Finally, ECENTA wants its people to be successful. A lot of companies say that, but ECENTA talks the talk and walks the walk. I have never faced an issue within a SAP system or with a customer that someone from ECENTA wasn’t able to assist me with. If I have something going on in my personal life I’m allotted the time needed to deal with those issues and we always work things out so that my project and performance is not impacted. From my Consulting Manager to the Board, I know that each person in management understands the consulting life and the need for projects to be successful while consultants feel like they have a life outside of work.

I haven’t found the combination of those qualities anywhere else, and I couldn’t see myself with a company that did not have the same values and standards as ECENTA. So ECENTA is my choice, and I know it is the right one.

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